Скачать или смотреть DAVE COUPER - vocal cover of DREAM THEATER's "Surrounded"

Dave Couper (formerly the bassist for Aussie prog rock band CALIGULA'S HORSE) covers the vocal parts of DREAM THEATER's "Surrounded”, the fourth track from "Images And Words" (c) 1992 Atco Records.

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Undertaken on the evening of Tuesday, the 29th March, 2022, somewhere in Brisbane, Australia, after a trip to the gym (more of that to come too, I promise!). Audio and video edits completed that night.

Video recorded on a Samsung Galaxy 9+ phone. Vocal audio recorded into Cubase Pro 10.5 with a Rode NT2A microphone.

Added reverb, compression, tweaked the EQs, and threw on a mild Howard Benson Vocal plugin. There is no tuning on this whatsoever, and given the main take and the brief doubling went quite well, I didn’t even look at the Melodyne pitch forms 😊. Some of my rhythms in the quiet sections were a bit laggy, in conjunction with the sparse rhythmic content in the piano and with no click track; I'm not particularly fussed, knowing it would be much easier to sing along with a real keyboard player.

The balance between “doing as live a runthrough as possible” and “doing a perfect version” is a tricky one, but I am trying my best to err on the side of a full live take of the main parts, followed by the harmonies and/or any doublings and/or the non-Labrie parts where relevant. “Surrounded” is just one lead part and a couple of stanzas that James doubled on the original, no harmonies involved.

This song gets covered quite a lot, and there are some great ones out there. If you rate this version, comment here about other D.T. songs you reckon you'd like to hear me cover, as well as songs by other bands in the same realm of prog, or modern hard rock, or late 80's/early 90's Aussie rock, and I'll see what I can come up with. Heavier metal? - probs not so much, though judging by my Periphery “Racecar” video, I’m working on it.

If you don't rate it, give me your funniest comment/roast as to why. I don't expect everyone to love this rendition, and I sincerely hope for a multitude of reactions. But, ah, keep it civil, Cybil 😉

The plethora of Dream Theater videos is mainly because all of the instrumental version tracks are available online, either because the band itself made them available or because of Ádám Kolonics, who has somewhat brilliantly used Audacity to filter out the vox and put the results on his YouTube channel. This fullness of instrumental versions is something that cannot be said about most other bands and artists.

I’ve got some more vocal covers in the pipeline. See you for the next batch!

Luv Coups

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